Sink or save Twitter: the chaos left by a month with Elon Musk

And it's only been a month.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
27 November 2022 Sunday 23:41
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Sink or save Twitter: the chaos left by a month with Elon Musk

And it's only been a month.

The arrival of Elon Musk to Twitter celebrates 30 days with massive layoffs, tumbles with the strategy and disastrous bets that leave disorder as king.

Bordering on the abyss at times, Musk made it clear within days of arriving: "Twitter will do a lot of stupid things in the coming months. We'll keep the ones that work, we'll change the ones that don't." Betting on everything or nothing, with laughter and memes to reduce the tension. "Shouldn't we be dead by now or something?" he tweeted defiantly on Wednesday.

"The feeling this month is that it has been complete chaos, with bad practices due to how decisions have been made, communicated or executed, especially with employees," says Ángel Barbero, a professor at EAE Business School who specializes in the digital world. .

Looking back, for him as if the purchase had not happened. She tried to abort it by claiming that Twitter was full of bots and spam. Parag Agrawal, then CEO, launched a thread in mid-May in which he explained how the phenomenon was combated and said that less than 5% of the accounts were fake or spam. Musk's answer, short and simple: the poop emoji.

A sign that he was coming to collide head-on with the directive. On October 26, he entered the offices for the first time -carrying a sink- and just two days later he took control and fired the CEO, the chief financial officer, the legal director... Blank tabula and concentration of power: everyone who they had not gone out to exploit the potential of Twitter they were leaving. "The impression is that it worked on automatic pilot for years," admits César Córcoles, an expert in digital products at the UOC.

With the departures, that October 28 marked the true before and after. "The bird has been released," he tweeted. New era. Advertisers, seeing the disorder of his arrival and changes in freedom of expression, bolted.

One of the first missions was to turn around the company culture of Twitter, close to the broad sleeve of Silicon Valley, with flexibility for workers and benefits in the workplace. At least that's Musk's view. "Twitter spends 13 million a year at headquarters. The maximum attendance is 25%, the average 10%. "There are more people preparing breakfast than having breakfast. They don't even bother to serve meals, because there's no one in the building," he said.

He condemned all that to banishment. There were too many people and too little work. The company employed almost 8,000 people and was a loss pit, oversized after the pandemic. His solution: half the squad on the streets and the start of marathon days to apply changes. "Unfortunately there was no option (other than firing) when the company loses more than 4 million dollars a day," he detailed. "Twitter was successful according to certain parameters -impact in the press, in public opinion, politics...- in monetization it was not going well", reviews Córcoles.

He asked those who opted for teleworking, which was prohibited, to return to the offices. "The largest number of people I've seen in that building by far," he joked another day in the photo of Musk with dozens of employees at one in the morning.

Cutting expenses and generating more income is the key to turning any business around. To increase billing, the star idea is to charge for verified accounts with the blue tick. In return, better features and less invasive advertising. Something that has not also been exempt from comings, goings and controversies. First he raised a monthly fee of $20. "Fuck it, they should pay me. If they implement it, I'm leaving," Stephen King challenged. In the end, he got 8 after haggling with the writer.

He implemented it and it was a disaster: people posing as politicians, celebrities, impersonating companies and causing them to fall on the stock market... The chaos forced them to delay their application. He first said that he would arrive on November 29. Then it was put on hold without a date. And it was corrected again days later...

The road was known to be full of curves. But at times it seemed that there was no steering wheel and no driver.

Musk went too far with the layoffs. He asked workers who had left to come back. Then, among those who remained on board, he issued an ultimatum: you stay to work piecework or you go. "Going back to working 23 hours like in the nineties or in the dotcom bubble is a step back," Barbero believes. Many quit. Some were even fired from Twitter because he questioned it in public, with a message that he later deleted.

The workforce had become so thin that rumors were beginning to circulate of a possible collapse due to lack of personnel to keep the platform running. "Normally, the phases in these processes are measured, without touching the quality. You cannot do the work of months or years in a month, an important structural part is being loaded. It has blown everything up," warns Barbero.

Neither control nor salvation? With the workforce at a minimum and the board headless, between layoffs and resignations, Musk has come to talk about bankruptcy ... the same situation with which he jokes, pulling memes. "Twitter is alive", he launched to silence the worst omens. Almost at the same time, he asked by email that everyone who knew something about programming would raise their hand, because there weren't enough hands.

In this roller coaster Musk has even been sticking out his chest. "The trend is promising", he launched it in the middle of the month. "We have just reached a new record in the use of Twitter," he posited a week ago. That of better that is spoken ill of one that is not spoken. "Cutting losses in the short term can be a problem in the medium or long term. It makes you doubt whether everything is improving or getting worse. Changes had to be made, but the rush is not good," launches Córcoles.

Despite arriving sweeping, the businessman is not all clear. "What should Twitter do now?" he launched into an open-ended question for users to brainstorm. He has also left it in his hands to grant an amnesty to all the blocked accounts, giving a voice to anyone. "He has prioritized generating new income over other things such as content moderation, hate speech. He has focused money and the other is very important," Barbero alerts.

Musk is always easygoing, at least in his profile. As if he had everything under control. "The impression from the outside is that it has been chaos. Too many layoffs and too fast, with serious strategic errors. As a user or advertiser, the jokes do not reassure too much," says Córcoles.

Why so much change and with so much urgency? Look for profitability as soon as possible. It also responds to a master plan in which Twitter is the starting point. Musk wants to create X, a platform from which you can do everything: chat, pay, browse... Similar to Chinese WeChat. "Buying Twitter is an accelerator to create X, the app for everything," he confessed in October.

At the moment, the project lives tumbling. "The decisions have loaded knowledge and strategy, with the disappearance of critical equipment. The economic model on which it was sustained has been broken, the sale of advertising will suffer. The most likely scenario is that despite the changes working lose influence, but without disappearing", concludes Barbero. "Hate speech is going to be problematic, no matter who manages it. Twitter needed an active hand. I'm not so sure that Elon Musk's is the best...", closes Córcoles. The bird is free, will it fly?